William Cohanhttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/william-cohan
en-usFri, 09 Dec 2016 23:34:29 -0500Fri, 09 Dec 2016 23:34:29 -0500The latest news on William Cohan from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-prince-alwaleed-got-rich-2013-3The Story Of How Prince Alwaleed Made His Fortune Is Rather Controversialhttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-prince-alwaleed-got-rich-2013-3
Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:48:00 -0400Linette Lopez
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/514b1cb86bb3f7537e000009-400-300/prince-alwaleed-in-1994-1.jpg" border="0" alt="prince alwaleed in 1994" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>The controversy surrounding Saudi investor <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/prince-alwaleed">Prince Alwaleed</a>'s fortune isn't limited to his current wealth, it also extends to questions about how he made his fortune.</p>
<p>So let's get to them.</p>
<p>Columnist William D. Cohan sat down with the Prince in Paris for Vanity Fair. After describing the Prince's quirky habits and fast-paced lifestyle he settles into the most important question &mdash; how he started out as a businessman. The feature is, after all, called <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/03/myth-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-saudi#">"The Creation Myth of Prince Alwaleed."</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/03/myth-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-saudi">From Vanity Fair:</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The official story of how Alwaleed got his start in business is where, many people believe, the myths about him originate. Alwaleed claims his father gave him $30,000. Within a year, he had lost the money. He went back to his father, who gave him $300,000. This time, it took him three years to lose it. He went back to his father again, who refused to give him more money and instead gave him the deed to a house he was building for Alwaleed in Riyadh. &ldquo;Go work for yourself,&rdquo; his father admonished. Alwaleed got a $600,000 mortgage on the house from a branch of Citibank in Riyadh. In pictures, the house looks like little more than a ramshackle structure and certainly not one that would serve as collateral for a large mortgage. To raise additional money, Alwaleed says, he sold a $200,000 necklace that his father had given his first wife, Dalal bint Saud, a daughter of King Saud. &ldquo;She sold it for me and no one knows about this,&rdquo; he says. As a grandson of the king, he also received a monthly stipend of $15,000.</p>
<p>That's when Alwaleed started doing deals in Saudi Arabia. <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/forbes">Forbes</a> estimated his wealth at about $1 billion at that point (1988), but he wasn't known in the U.S. until the <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/new-york-times">New York Times</a> reported that he saved Citigroup by investing $590 million in a preferred-stock issue.</p>
<p>He ultimate built a 10% stake in the bank.</p>
<p>In 1999, though, The Economist wrote a story saying that all this was bunk &mdash;&nbsp;&ldquo;you could barely clothe a Saudi prince for such sums, let alone furnish him with a multi-million-dollar empire...he has not earned enough from his investments to pay for all he has spent in the 1990s.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Of course, Alwaleed has an answer for that <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/03/myth-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-saudi">(Vanity Fair):</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">&ldquo;That&rsquo;s their problem. There&rsquo;s no myth.&rdquo; He insists that his wealth is self-made. &ldquo;If I had access to oil, why would I borrow $30,000 from my father, or from Citigroup?&rdquo; he asked me, incredulously. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d just begin from the beginning with $10 million. Why would I do that? Why would I do it twice and go bankrupt? And, by the way, strange enough, the first loan I got from Citigroup, I still have the loan paper. . . . If I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, why would I have a tin spoon in my mouth?&rdquo;</p>
<p>Kerry A. Dolan, the senior editor at Forbes who wrote an epic takedown on Alwaleed's wealth earlier this month told <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/business-insider">Business Insider</a> Alwaleed is "quite serious about investing" and that he reads everything and works hard &mdash; so this isn't a game to him.</p>
<p>Alwaleed isn't playing at business and investing, he just hasn't always been winning at it either.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/03/myth-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-saudi">Read the full piece at Vanity Fair&gt;</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-prince-alwaleed-got-rich-2013-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/vanity-fair-april-issue-ackman-2013-3A Vanity Fair Profile Of Bill Ackman Is Coming Out Tomorrow And Trust Us You're Going To Want To Read Ithttp://www.businessinsider.com/vanity-fair-april-issue-ackman-2013-3
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:26:01 -0500Julia La Roche
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4d4fee7749e2ae3156060000-400-300/bill-ackman-2.jpg" border="0" alt="bill ackman" /></p><p>The April issue of&nbsp;<em>Vanity Fair&nbsp;</em>hits newsstands tomorrow.&nbsp;</p>
<p>We're excited because we can't wait to read Bill Cohan's feature on the hedge fund war between <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bill-ackman">Bill Ackman</a> and Daniel Loeb and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/carl-icahn">Carl Icahn</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>We've already seen the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ackman-and-loeb-bike-ride-story-2013-2">sneak peak about that Hamptons bike ride with Loeb</a> last summer that totally destroyed Ackman.</p>
<p>Basically, the anecdote Cohan shares made Ackman, the CEO of <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/pershing-square">Pershing Square</a>, look overly confident and that he thinks he's always right. Those are major reasons why some people in the hedge fund community dislike him.&nbsp;</p>
<p>There's supposed to be some juicy tid-bits about the friendships between these hedge fund titans.&nbsp;</p>
<p>We can't wait to read it.&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/vanity-fair-april-issue-ackman-2013-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/is-it-worth-it-to-go-after-steve-cohen-2012-11BILL COHAN: Is It Even Worth It To Go After Steve Cohen?http://www.businessinsider.com/is-it-worth-it-to-go-after-steve-cohen-2012-11
Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:28:35 -0500Linette Lopez
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/50b779196bb3f75845000007-401-302/cohan-goldman-genius.jpg" border="0" alt="cohan-goldman-genius" width="401" height="302" /></p><p>Since Mathew Martoma, the hedge fund manager at the center of the biggest alleged insider trading case in history ($275 million) was arrested, speculation has run wild that his boss SAC Capital's <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/steve-cohen">Steve Cohen</a>, will eventually fall as well.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-cohen-cr-intrinsic-2012-11">Cohen is mentioned as 'Portfolio Manager A'</a> in the complaint against Martoma, putting him very near the alleged criminal activity.</p>
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bloomberg">Bloomberg</a> columnist <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-28/is-sac-capitals-steve-cohen-worth-catching#p1">Bill Cohan</a> believes that this likely means that Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney who has already won around 70 convictions for insider trading, is getting close to the great catch that is SAC's main man.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Bharara and his team did, after all, spend a year trying to get Martoma to flip on his employer.</p>
<p>The question to Cohan is, however, is this worth all the money and trouble? From Bloomberg:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">If Cohen and his firm are nothing more than a criminal enterprise engaged in widespread insider trading, then Bharara is absolutely right to spend his time and his office&rsquo;s resources going after them. Insider trading is justifiably illegal because the proper functioning of the capital markets depends on people having confidence the market is not a rigged game.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The bigger question for government prosecutors, though, is why none of the traders, bankers, or executives at the Wall Street banks who caused the 2008 financial crisis has been brought to justice. After the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, some 3,500 bankers ended up criminally prosecuted and behind bars. This time around, no one on Wall Street has done jail time. In a June 2011 speech, Bharara said, &ldquo;We too want to hold accountable anyone who deserves to be punished.&thinsp;&hellip; Any case we make, however, will be because it is appropriate and deserved, not because there is overwhelming public pressure to do so.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Cohan's bottom line: If you're going to go after the bad guys, don't pat yourself on the back until you go after <em>all</em> the bad guys.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/is-it-worth-it-to-go-after-steve-cohen-2012-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/journalists-smith-goldman-book-boring-2012-10Everyone Is Coming To The Same Depressing Conclusion About Greg Smith's Goldman Sachs Tell-Allhttp://www.businessinsider.com/journalists-smith-goldman-book-boring-2012-10
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:50:23 -0400Linette Lopez
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/508175dcecad046020000010/greg-smith.jpg" border="0" alt="Greg Smith" /></p><p>Now that a number of journalists have seen Greg Smith's <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/goldman-sachs">Goldman Sachs</a> book, we can do a fly-around and see what the general take-away is.</p>
<p>And usually, when controversial books like this comes out, there's a debate about the contents and what it means for Wall Street at large &mdash; so we expected fireworks.</p>
<p>In this case, that just isn't happening. Even journalists who are critical of Goldman Sachs are saying, aside from a hot tub scene and some internship insight, this book is a snooze fest.</p>
<p>Take Goldman vet and <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/greg-smith-another-wall-street-con-man.html">Bloomberg columnist William Cohan</a> for one. He literally wrote the book on <strong>Goldman, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World</strong>, and his wife happens to be an executive at Grand Central Publishing, the company that paid Smith $1.5 million to write the book.</p>
<p>In his piece, he calls Greg Smith a con-man. Not because anything he said was untrue, but because he has us all sitting up and listening for nothing.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/greg-smith-another-wall-street-con-man.html">Here's Cohan's take (via Bloomberg):</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">What to make of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s release to <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bloomberg">Bloomberg</a> News of internal self-assessments and peer reviews of Greg Smith, who left the firm in March through a notorious op-ed piece in the <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/new-york-times">New York Times</a>. While the release of the documents does raise troubling questions for the bank itself, what they reveal about Smith -- without question -- is that he is nothing more than a sweet-talking con man.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">He conned the Times into thinking he was resigning from Goldman Sachs on principle, when he was really nothing more than a disgruntled and ambitious former employee who wanted a bigger bonus and a bigger title and got, and merited, neither.</p>
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/andrew-ross-sorkin">Andrew Ross Sorkin</a> put in his two cents about Greg Smith's Goldman Sachs tell-all book on Squawk Box this morning as well <a href="http://qz.com/17608/andrew-ross-sorkin-greg-smith/">(h/t qz).</a></p>
<p>His verdict is the same It's a snooze fest, and he wants the time he took skimming the book back.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"It reads like a diary... the most interesting this is his one brush with Lloyd Blankfein" (in the gym bathroom where he saw Blankfein naked).</p>
<p>Sorkin agree with Cohan on the idea that , <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/the-new-york-times">The New York Times</a> as well for running the original op-ed.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"I feel in a way he might of conned the NY Times for running the op-ed... he may have conned 60 Minutes," (where Smith will do an interview on Sunday).</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"He may have conned everyone else," Sorkin continued.</p>
<p>Check out the video below:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><object id="cnbcplayer" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="400" height="380"><param name="type" value="application/x-shockwave-flash" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="quality" value="best" /><param name="scale" value="noscale" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><param name="salign" value="lt" /><param name="flashVars" value="startTime=000" /><param name="flashVars" value="endTime=000" /><param name="movie" value="http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/3000123550/code/cnbcplayershare/&amp;startTime=23/&amp;endTime=100" /><embed name="cnbcplayer" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" bgcolor="#000000" quality="best" wmode="transparent" scale="noscale" salign="lt" src="http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/3000123550/code/cnbcplayershare/&amp;startTime=23/&amp;endTime=100" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="380" width="400" /></object></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/journalists-smith-goldman-book-boring-2012-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/william-cohan-greg-smith-is-in-the-witness-protection-program-right-now-2012-3William Cohan: Greg Smith Is In The Witness Protection Program Right Nowhttp://www.businessinsider.com/william-cohan-greg-smith-is-in-the-witness-protection-program-right-now-2012-3
Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:03:51 -0400Linette Lopez
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bloomberg">Bloomberg</a> columnist William Cohan knows something about Wall Street. He's the author of 'Money and Power: How <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/goldman-sachs">Goldman Sachs</a> Came to Rule the World', so naturally he got to comment about Greg Smith's Goldman Sachs resignation op-ed.</p>
<p>And Cohan didn't mince words: &ldquo;He's toast. He is completely toast in terms of Wall Street, no question about that. He is in the witness protection program right now."</p>
<p>Not that Cohan doesn't agree with Smith. In fact, he said that "Goldman's culture has gotten off the tracks. They espouse this idea of the client comes first but in fact, we know time and again, whether it's the Abacus transaction or a number of other things that they did in the financial crisis beginning in 2006 when they put the big short on and they continued to sell mortgage-backed securities to their clients at par, that Goldman has been putting itself first."</p>
<p>More from Cohan (via Bloomberg):</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><br />"He obviously knows how Goldman treated derivatives clients and he knows what he did with his own derivatives clients. Whether or not he understands the Goldman strategy overall, he's not on the management committee or even a partner of the firm. I'd never heard of him before, not sure what that means. But the point is that he knows what he knows and is obviously frustrated."</p>
<p>Watch the full video below:</p>
<script src="http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?height=360&amp;embedCode=o0ZnFzMzrT3UkD2j1i33sFY-SaLTSrEB&amp;deepLinkEmbedCode=o0ZnFzMzrT3UkD2j1i33sFY-SaLTSrEB&amp;width=640" type="text/javascript"></script><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/william-cohan-greg-smith-is-in-the-witness-protection-program-right-now-2012-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-wall-street-is-a-cartel-and-has-been-since-the-1940s-2012-1Bill Cohan: Wall Street Is A Cartel And Has Been Since The 1940'shttp://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-wall-street-is-a-cartel-and-has-been-since-the-1940s-2012-1
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:16:00 -0500Ben Walsh
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4d66b4d749e2ae7e2a1d0000/mexico-cartel-arrests.jpg" border="0" alt="mexico cartel arrests" /></p><p>After most recently addressing his ire at the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-an-academic-describes-how-wall-street-psychopaths-caused-the-financial-crisis-2012-1">mental instability of the executives</a> running Wall Street's major institutions, Bill Cohan&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-09/cohan-how-wall-street-turned-a-crisis-into-a-cartel.html">this week</a> examines the shrinking competition among the largest Wall Street firms and makes a well-argued case that it represents a pattern of behavior stretching back to the 1940's.</p>
<p>Specifically, Cohan dissects a 1947 anti-trust case that was brought against 17 firms for colluding to set prices for investment banking services.</p>
<p>While the suit was thrown out in 1953 for what a judge deemed undue reliance on circumstantial evidence, Cohan thinks the government's argument "was spot on":</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The investment-banking business was then a cartel where the biggest and most powerful firms controlled the market and then set the prices for their services, leaving customers with few viable choices for much needed capital, advice or trading counterparties.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The same argument can be made today.</p>
<p>Using a term associated with drug lords and OPEC, Cohan argues that because the financial crisis drastically reduced the number of top-tier investment banks (you can't even name 17 'top-tier' investment banks today), and with it the decreased the modicum of competition they engendered, "the investment-banking business is an even more powerful and threatening cartel than it was in 1947."</p>
<p>The best evidence for cartel-like behavior today?</p>
<p>The prices charged for services across top-tier firms.</p>
<p>Cohan quotes industry standard rates for stock and debt underwriting, loan syndication and M&amp;A advice, which varying insignificantly from bank to bank and deal to deal.</p>
<p>Another piece of evidence not cited by Cohan that nonetheless supports his point are the strong trading quarters enjoyed by many investment banks in 2009. There simply were fewer competitors and that placed a premium on liquidity, which is fair enough except for the fact that the reduction of market participants had been directly caused by government actions taken with little oversight by the former CEO of a leading investment bank and the government took no countervailing measure to create price competition.</p>
<p>Cohan's points to Google's use of the auction method in its IPO as a rare moment when the established system was challenged. But as we've noted here before, it's the brave few founders who are willing to risk unorthodox offering methods. Better to pony up and pay an arguably over the top 7% underwriting fee than see the IPO of the company you founded fail.</p>
<p>So where do we stand now? As Cohan notes, no anti-trust lawsuit against investment banks is in the works. But he does see a glimmer of hope in the Obama Administration's rejection of the AT&amp;T, Deutsche Telecom merger, in which Wall Street lost millions in fees.</p>
<p>Still, that's a fee banks would gladly pay for business as usual to stay as such.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-wall-street-is-a-cartel-and-has-been-since-the-1940s-2012-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-weekend-roundup-stories-2012-1Brunch Conversation: The Stories Everyone Will Be Talking About This Weekendhttp://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-weekend-roundup-stories-2012-1
Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0500Ben Walsh
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4b59cd090000000000836698/rich-wealthy-party-hamptons-girls-blonde-polo.jpg" border="0" alt="rich wealthy party hamptons girls blonde polo" /></p><p>Try talking to someone at over cocktails about Richard Cordray, <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/freddie-mac">Freddie Mac</a>, the SEC's new settlement guidelines or any of the other weighty headlines of the week and their eyes will glaze over.</p>
<p>Start with a how Christian Bale explains the financial crisis, why a commercial with a squealing pig makes your head want to explode or Jon Corzine's French real estate adventures and things will go much better.</p><h3>Bill Cohan's latest takes direct aim at the psyche of Wall Street is a llittle psycho.</h3>
<img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4c8795ad7f8b9a7070c00100-400-300/bill-cohans-latest-takes-direct-aim-at-the-psyche-of-wall-street-is-a-llittle-psycho.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-an-academic-describes-how-wall-street-psychopaths-caused-the-financial-crisis-2012-1">How Wall Street Psychopaths Caused The Financial Crisis</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bloomberg" class="hidden_link">Bloomberg</a><span>&nbsp;View columnist Bill Cohan has stumbled on a&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-03/did-psychopaths-take-over-wall-street-asylum-commentary-by-william-cohan.html">fascinating academic paper from British scholar Clive Boddy on corporate psychopaths</a><span>&nbsp;and how they may have caused the financial crisis. [</span><a href="http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/fulltext.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1269145-p35739432">You can download the paper here</a><span>&nbsp;via Springer Science+Business Media.]</span><span><br /><br /><br /></span></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Yet another Bank of America PR catastrophe, this time involving Newlyweds.</h3>
<img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4f03913169bedddd1e000012-400-300/yet-another-bank-of-america-pr-catastrophe-this-time-involving-newlyweds.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/you-wont-believe-why-one-bofa-branch-refused-to-let-a-new-bride-deposit-a-check-2012-1#ixzz1iju57VxI">You Won't Believe Why One BofA Branch Refused To Let A New Bride Deposit A Check</a></p>
<p><span>From wildly&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bofa-dropping-fee-2011-11">unpopular proposed debit card fees</a><span>&nbsp;to&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shocker-bank-of-americas-site-still-not-working-2011-10">non-functioning websites</a><span>&nbsp;to&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/this-mans-hilarious-youtube-video-convinced-bank-of-america-to-close-on-his-home-2011-12">customers resorting to social media stardom</a><span>&nbsp;to resolve their problems, the client snafus for&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bank-of-america" class="hidden_link">Bank of America</a><span>&nbsp;never seem to end.</span></p>
<p>This time, the bank's gaffe hindered the personal life of a journalist&mdash;<a href="http://blog.timesunion.com/pete/pete-vs-bank-of-america/1122/">Pete Iorizzo, a reporter for the Albany Times-Union in Albany, New York</a>. And Iorizzo did what any well-meaning journalist would do&mdash;write about it. [via&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/03/bank-of-america-new-bride-wedding-checks_n_1181901.html?1325628799">Huffington Post</a>]</p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Oddly, the CFTC is inching away from letting people trade on the Presidential race.</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4ecd19596bb3f7193200004d-400-300/oddly-the-cftc-is-inching-away-from-letting-people-trade-on-the-presidential-race.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cftc-reviewing-proposal-to-allow-exchange-traded-futures-based-on-the-presidential-race-2012-1#ixzz1ijurBEdS"><span>Shucks! Looks Like CFTC Doesn't Want You To Trade Based On The Presidential Race</span></a><span><br /></span></p>
<p><span><span>Investors hoping to make official, regulated bets on the presidential election outcome later this year are out of luck for now.</span></span></p>
<p>The Commodity Futures Trading Commission&nbsp;<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/u-futures-cop-review-presidential-race-gambling-231812220.html">announced yesterday it would put a proposal submitted by the&nbsp;North American Derivatives Exchange&mdash;or Nadex&mdash;in December to allow trading of "political events contracts" under a 90-day review</a>, according to Reuters. If the Commission had approved the action, trading of these options contracts linked to the results of this year's presidential election would have been begun today on the exchange.</p></p>
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-weekend-roundup-stories-2012-1#clusterstock-decided-to-stand-up-to-the-geico-pig-terrorizing-its-televisions-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-an-academic-describes-how-wall-street-psychopaths-caused-the-financial-crisis-2012-1BILL COHAN: This Is How Wall Street Psychopaths Caused The Financial Crisishttp://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-an-academic-describes-how-wall-street-psychopaths-caused-the-financial-crisis-2012-1
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:03:00 -0500Lisa Du
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4c8795ad7f8b9a7070c00100/bateman-american-psycho.jpg" border="0" alt="bateman american psycho" /></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bloomberg" class="hidden_link">Bloomberg</a> View columnist Bill Cohan has stumbled on a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-03/did-psychopaths-take-over-wall-street-asylum-commentary-by-william-cohan.html">fascinating academic paper from British scholar Clive Boddy on corporate psychopaths</a> and how they may have caused the financial crisis. [<a href="http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/fulltext.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1269145-p35739432">You can download the paper here</a>&nbsp;via Springer Science+Business Media.]</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, Boddy notes that psychopaths are specially able to thrive in Wall Street firms because of its very nature&mdash;filled with chaos, high turnover and rapid change. Psychopaths are then able to use their charisma to appear like key leaders within the frenetic atmosphere of Wall Street, yet at the same time remain ruthless and calculating.</p>
<p>On Bloomberg TV this morning, Cohan also added that <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/video/83609304/">this kind of work atmosphere has only been prevalent recently as financial institutions have gone public</a>. Back in the days of private partnerships, "there was a collegial nature and... everybody knew everyone else and you couldn't possibly get to the top if you were a crazy person," he said.</p>
<p>Boddy lays down the blame pretty hard, as Cohan describes in his column:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">They [corporate psychopaths] &ldquo;largely caused the crisis&rdquo; because their &ldquo;<strong>single- minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to an abandonment of the old-fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.</strong>&rdquo;</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Boddy doesn&rsquo;t name names, but the type of personality he describes is recognizable to all from the financial crisis.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">He says the unnamed &ldquo;they&rdquo; seem &ldquo;to be unaffected&rdquo; by the corporate collapses they cause. These psychopaths &ldquo;present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very convincing in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.&rdquo;</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-03/did-psychopaths-take-over-wall-street-asylum-commentary-by-william-cohan.html">Read the whole column here &gt;</a></strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-cohan-an-academic-describes-how-wall-street-psychopaths-caused-the-financial-crisis-2012-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p>